Hospital patients are frequently transferred from one area of a hospital to a different area. To perform that transfer, a patient is placed on a gurney or wheelchair and a medical assistant pushes the patient to a desired destination. Frequently, a patient receives intravenous fluids from an IV assembly. The IV assembly can include a rolling IV stand having a vertical pole with one or more IV bags and drip lines leading to the patient. Transferring the IV assembly along with the patient has presented a number of challenges. For example, a second medical assistant is sometimes used to push the IV assembly at the same pace as the gurney. A different patient transfer approach involves turning off each IV and moving each of the IV bags from the support stand to a second stand attached to the gurney. However, turning off an IV for critical care patients greatly increases the risks to their health. In addition, there is a risk that a busy medical assistant may forget to turn an IV back on or establish an improper drip rate. Also, whenever IV bags are handled, there is a risk that a bag may be dropped and potentially explode. In the case of some critical care patients, there can be five or more IV lines connected to a patient. These multiple lines can easily become entangled and crossed when patients are transferred from a gurney to a table or a bed, and vice versa. Moreover, infusion pumps are often clamped to the IV pole and need to be turned on and off and properly transferred from one pole to another, which further complicates patient transfers.
The increased labor requirements for transferring IV bags from one IV pole to another IV pole and/or independently moving an IV pole along side a gurney greatly increases medical costs. In addition, patient safety is potentially jeopardized every time an IV assembly is transferred between poles.
Recently, connecting devices have been proposed that interconnect a gurney or wheelchair with an IV assembly. However, the known devices do not provide easy attachment and removal to a gurney or wheelchair. Nor do the known devices provide a redundant securing feature that prevents unwanted detachment of the IV pole from the connecting device.